Glossi only employs 14 people, but already includes brands like DKNY and Nine West, magazines like Cosmopolitan and Lucky Magazine, and fashion icons like Nina Garcia. Now, with advanced editing tools geared to let self-publishers be even more creative, Glossi could be the next hot vehicle for professional and amateur publishers to spread influence.

New features include customizable templates, the ability to clone existing Glossi pages for expedited workflow, and "stands" — a newsstand-inspired offering that lets you embed curated collections on your website, blog or Facebook page. You can even monetize your work by setting a visible price tag on your Glossi covers.

Lionsgate Entertainment currently uses Glossi's tools to promote The Hunger Games movies, asking fans to create unique magazines and submit their creations to a dedicated Facebook page. This fan-generated marketing campaign doesn't cost Lionsgate very much money, and serves as an example for other brands to tap into the Glossi publishing system as an ecommerce machine.

Over the past three months, Glossi magazines have accrued 300,000 views — with more than 1 million total views on individual pages per month.

"If you take the time to customize it, you probably like what you're doing," CEO and co-founder Matt Edelman explains. "The whole reason we created Glossi is because we looked at how content consumption patterns are changing."

The digital publishing space is getting crowded. But what sets Glossi apart from competitors like Flipboard and OpenZine, says Edelman, is its simple interface, social sharing options and adoption by big content creators. Edelman calls Glossi a "tech company enabling the creation of media."

At the moment, Glossi is free, with only a handful of users paying. Edelman wouldn't elaborate on the details of his partnerships, referencing the company's goal of targeting what works and what doesn't in the early going.

"We don't feel compelled to charge people right now because we're learning," he says.

Edelman predicts future iterations of the platform will include freemium options and tiered pricing. Other tools on the horizon will help distribute and monetize users' magazines, and potentially even direct placement to facilitate sales on sites like Amazon and personal blogs. He hopes to launch these features by the end of 2013.

Edelman says praise from early adopters gives him more reason to look forward to the next step. "[Glossi is] a great tool for creating strong visual content with an inspirational experience," says Melissa Gonzalez, the CEO and founder of fashion ecommerce company Lion'esque Style. Gonzales primarily uses Glossi to publish weekly trend collections, brand launches, new products and style tips.

As part of his effort to make Glossi the first choice for publishers, Edelman says he's open to print digital magazines on paper. "The irony is when you print, you might lose components of what makes a Glossi so special," he says. "But if you design a Glossi that has static pages, there's no reason in the future we wouldn't have it as another option."

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